Broadband network service providers must be able to provide reliable service for a large number of customers by having communication equipment capable of transmitting vast amounts of data at speeds in excess of a guaranteed threshold. In order to guarantee the reliability of this communications equipment, testing under real-world and worst-case conditions is necessary. The testing of communications equipment is also important to the equipment manufacturers that develop and provide equipment to the service providers, as such manufacturers require a way of determining their equipment will function as planned.
A major problem for all parties concerned with network testing is the tremendous rate of growth of modern networks, both in terms of numbers of users and the required data transmission capacity. For example, the Internet has grown from connecting a several thousand users to millions of users in a few years. This growth has required tremendous improvements in the equipment providing Internet connections. To handle the current traffic loads, routers, in particular, have gone from using single, relatively low power microprocessors to using multiple microprocessors, each of which is far more powerful than earlier microprocessors.
As the complexity and capacity of the Internet increases, the capacity of network test equipment to conduct realistic tests must also increase. This has meant major, frequent increases in the speed and capacity of the testing equipment used to test networking systems. As a result, network test equipment manufacturers have had to constantly redesign test equipment in order to provide the fastest available microprocessors and associated hardware and software. Each time microprocessor manufacturers release a new microprocessor, the test equipment manufacturers must engage in a major redesign effort. These redesign efforts are difficult, expensive and labor intensive processes. Although new microprocessors are needed to keep up with the growth in router power, it has become increasingly difficult for the network test equipment manufacturers to keep up with the need for constant redesign to accommodate new microprocessors. It often seems that, as soon as the test equipment manufacturers have completed a design, the microprocessor manufacturers release a new microprocessor necessitating further redesign efforts. The customers for this equipment, principally the network service providers, are understandably concerned about the cost of frequent equipment replacement. They need a more flexible arrangement that can more easily cope with frequent changes in microprocessors.
A representative example of the current state of the art in broadband testing, and the problems faced by developers of this type of equipment, can be found in the Adtech AX/4000, manufactured by the Adtech division of Spirent Communications. This system can simultaneously test multiple combinations of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Frame Relay, Ethernet, SONET, and IP technologies, with up to 1 million full-rate, real-time measurements at speeds up to 10 Gbps. These decoders comprise all of the major Internet protocols in use today. The system uses field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) that are very fast and a system architecture that enables users to program their test modules on site to support the latest developments in broadband testing. The system architecture is fully scalable and offers real-time broadband test traffic generation as a means of performing realistic tests of networks and switches.
Test traffic generation comprises provisions for using multiple traffic sources and classes of service, various traffic distribution models and user defined traffic content and sequencing. The test traffic generation component of the system also offers traffic prioritization, traffic shaping, policing to determine if traffic is properly shaped and error injection for tracing purposes.
This broadband test system offers bi-directional monitoring and analysis capabilities for traffic in two directions and automatic traffic filters to analyze substreams, based on such criteria as packet identifier and type of packet. There is a provision for full-rate capture to capture traffic at full rate for further analysis or protocol decoding. Because data capture is at full rate, the analyzer captures every single byte of every packet or cell received during the capture period. While this unit is an outstanding representative broadband test apparatus, it cannot be readily upgraded to keep up with the growth of broadband demand by using the latest microprocessor technology as it becomes available. Such testing devices therefore rapidly become obsolete as the technology advances.
Different components of the testing technology evolve at different paces. The networking standards and protocols do not evolve as rapidly as the computing power needed to keep up with the increase of band-width and the complexity of network architectures.
The present invention discloses a solution for improving the performance of test equipment for testing networking systems by improving data processing capabilities without requiring the complete redesign of the remaining testing related hardware and software.